This – the impending redesign and rerelease of the old House Trek videos I made in 2001-2004, marks the early stages of a lot of my movies from the past sixteen years, even a lot of fairly embarrassingly bad ones, winding up overhauled, and put on the internet. If you acted in any of my videos, please contact me via the contact page on TriumphantArtists.com! I will need contact info for all the past cast members on old projects, who haven’t already signed talent release forms. A talent release form, by the way, is basically a form in which the actor agrees that their image/voice/likeness as recorded by me in a video work, can be placed online. My version of the talent release form is distributed by ESignGenie, which lets you sign it digitally, via email, which is still legally valid. My version of the form is longer than a standard-issue release form, as it also defines terms of compensation for actors, and applies to video games, still art, and interactive media, not merely video. Some of you have already given contact info and agreed to my broad terms but there are a number of holdouts or people I have proven so far unable to reach. If that is you, please email me, again using the contact info page on TriumphantArtists.com.

This little note was originally posted July 10, 2016, had to be reconstructed due to SSL transition and such.

“Spiral Skies – and some other games – now in Unity 5? Yes. (Maybe)

I am exploring the option of using the Unity 5 engine to make a realtime 3D version of Spiral Skies. This is part of why this has been delayed further – I am pushing into full realtime 3D and that involves a lot of optimization but Unity is fortunately a good choice for this kind of project. In some ways the realtime version is weaker but in most respects it should end up looking way better. Apologies to anyone who wanted the 2D version in Construct 2, but this has a lot of potential if I can make it work correctly.”

UPDATE, as of February 10, 2017: It’s not perfectly functional yet but is progressing nicely – I’m doing most of the interactivity using PlayMaker for this game and it is turning out pretty well so far, great learning experience potentially highly applicable to future games. Will post more visual content before long, as soon as SpiralSkiesGame.com is designed fully and ready for widespread attention. I’ve registered that domain but nothing is there yet, will be soon but not yet. Suffice it to say that I’ve raised my aim as far as visual fidelity is concerned, and given the enormous, incredibly aggravating and nearly endless frustrations I’ve had with WebGL debugging and output in general (*grumble grumble*) I am only likely to release the game as a downloadable app for Windows, Mac, & Linux, and Android/iOS users will probably find that disappointing, as will the people on NewGrounds & Kongregate who wanted the game to be playable there, but… it’s the best I can do at the moment. Sorry.

Here’s an effects test for my upcoming short video ‘Averting Apocalypse’, with fire simulation. The 3d physics simulations are increasingly high quality and large in scope, to the point where I’m questioning whether miniature effects will have a place in my videos at all in the future. CG fire and explosion sequence Computer generated fire effects I mean, let’s face it, there’s something very satisfying about scale models going boom Derek Meddings/Joe Viskocil style, but the materials required to do that well can add up to make that somewhat impractical. I may even fake the miniatures in some parts of “Tinyville Disaster 2”, and that’s a video which relies heavily on the charm of miniatures! I think ‘Duel 2030’ may have been my last big miniature-effects project in recent memory, and even that was loaded with 3d animation. I’m getting closer and closer to a thorough integration of liquid effects, rigid body dynamics, and gaseous smoke/fire effects all seamlessly interacting with a lot of detail and realism, which begs the question, why would miniatures be better? Let’s face it, more CG and less real pyro is not only safer, it is less expensive, and that is a big plus when I’m facing down the sheer number of shots I need to get done. I think going the CGI route would save over $250 in the case of [Fortress Siege 2] and $400 in [House Trek: TNG] and $130 in [Averting Apocalypse], $100 in [Video Heist], etc. It all adds up to several thousand dollars saved and that is significant in reducing the obstacles to getting the video projects actually done.

ONE OF THE THINGS I’VE BEEN QUIETLY WORKING ON, IS READYING MY MASSIVE TROVE OF OLD VIDEOS FOR INTERNET RELEASE. THAT INCLUDES THE OLD ‘HOUSE TREK’ VIDEOS I MADE OVER A DECADE AGO (2001-2004)

House Trek old sci-fi videos, House Trek, remastered.

To be clear – the closest this comes to a fan film is the word ‘Trek’ and the fact that it’s in outer space. While I drew inspiration from a certain TV show, there is a major effort in the online release to avoid anything remotely resembling copyright infringement. I’m also often asked if Chris Van Allsburg’s work inspired this silliness. No, no it didn’t. This was inspired by my love of sci-fi as a young teen and I thinkthe reason I shot the videos inside my home was because I had no budget for a sci-fi set and I couldn’t really drive anywhere else. (Like the original ‘Send in the Clones’, It’s all in my house and I’m the only actor because my sisters wouldn’t be caught dead in my early videos, and nobody else wanted to be in them either.) So part of the goofball charm of the old videos is the way I childishly disregard science with sounds in space, no spacesuit on spacewalks, no obvious visible source of propulsion, and of course I’m using old computers from the early 2000s as my navigation system, and wearing sweatpants and walking around barefoot. It’s incredibly dumb and the fact that I’m redoing about half the VFX and almost all the audio doesn’t change that.

So this blog entry is the start of a series of occasional blog entries about my adventures in indie video production. The first three House Trek videos and Send in The Clones 1, were all made in 2001, shot on crappy tape-based camcorders, and marked the start of my infamy as a video/vfx nut. Back then I was using Bryce 3d and AlamDV2 as my VFX tools. Now I use Lightwave & After Effects, among other high-end programs, and can do far better work. So for online release I’m enhancing or replacing over 60 VFX shots in the six House Trek videos, creating a 9-second intro title sequence that kicks off each video, and restructuring the audio completely. The stock audio is the main cost here. I used some sci-fi movie soundtracks originally but clearly I can’t license any of that for online release without getting sued so I’ve swapped out all the music.

The new stuff is actually pretty good and licensing the stock music/SFX I needed was only around $30. Obviously this is only a tiny piece of a very long list of 80-odd videos made in the past 15 years so the process of getting them all recut, or as Minhthien says, “George Lucas-ing them” will cost hundreds of dollars. That doesn’t even consider the cost of the new video projects (which include a follow-up to this old series, “House Trek: The Next Generation”) or my video game projects.

It also doesn’t consider the time involved. I wish this blog were a huge hit, and the shop too, because then I’d be able to finish all the stuff I’d like to finish. There have been a hundred or so viewers here since I launched it just 3 days ago, which is great, but I would like to see this go even bigger. I want this blog to go viral, but it won’t happen without great content, and the great content won’t happen at a fast enough pace without an audience of roughly 12,000 regular viewers to support it, and what I have is a rotating batch of maybe 5000 regular viewers, who get bored and drift away as fast as new ones arrive. So we’re kind of stuck here in a slow-moving rut. I’m hopeful that things will improve, though, after the release of Spiral Skies. Which, sadly, is taking far longer than I’d like.

The price of items on the shop here will be based on the eBay ‘Buy it Now’ pricing, with typically only a slight 1-4% reduction in price per item. That’s not thrilling in itself.

The good news is there are a ton of additional discounts planned – discounts for repeat customers, aka loyalty rewards, and also if you refer friends to the blog, there’s a discount. If there’s a sale going on, then there’s another discount on top of that. You’ll even be able to join our affiliate program, which means if you refer somebody to the shop, and they buy something, you get a small percentage of the sale amount!

Basically, I will want the people who are fans of my work – the content on TriumphantArtists.com, PanoramicWorlds.com, etc, to spread the word about this shop because if it takes off I could potentially raise a lot of cash – enough to finish a long list of lingering projects that I really want to complete.

TIMING

The first sale on the shop will be an opening ten-day sale – from June 22 to July 2. There’ll also be a one-day sale on July 4th on a few items, but the broader sale will be in the initial ten day timeframe.

NEW PRODUCTS

-Local event services. If you want some sort of service in the Houston, TX area, especially near the 77023 zip code, such as videography of a special event, mural/wall/large surface painting, or group events/workshops, I will make some of those services available through the shop.

-Unique miniatures in N scale. Got a special place in mind that you want recreated in miniature? I can actually craft a miniature replica of a special location chosen by you. You might want your home recreated in miniature, or some other local building there is no premade kit for. The item can be sent ‘as is’ on a flat surface, for integration into a model railroad layout, or it can be placed in a display case with a painted backdrop, or it can be embedded in a snowglobe! Pricing and other details will be viewable on the shop before too long. The miniature category will also include a lot of premade designs to choose from.

-DVDs and Blu Rays with either video content or interactive media/games… found nowhere else and made by me!

-Prints of handmade art I’ve designed, i.e. posters and postcards and other similar items.

Hi everyone! Welcome to my WordPress blog! I had a minimalist blog planned here before but this is arguably simpler to maintain, searchable, and, well, just better than coding my own blog by hand. You can comment if you want to, or subscribe via RSS, or search the blog posts for relevant content. I will also be setting up a shop here with WooCommerce, as a supplement to my eBay and Etsy storefronts. Let’s face it, eBay is charging a lot of fees, and I can trim the prices down by about 4% for anyone who buys here instead – and, in some cases, maybe even more than that! I sell unique handcrafted artworks in acrylic, pastel, colored pencil, and other media, but I also offer services as a video editor, vfx artist, 3d artist, miniature artist, and web designer. You should definitely bookmark this site as things are going to be very interesting very soon.

Good news: SSL encryption is fully functional on all parts of HornbostelProductions.com, the domain (shop, etc) is fully secured with 2048-bit encryption and certification from a respected certificate authority [Comodo]. The domain and WP installation has been relocated as well to my new hosting platform, and that means enhanced load times and improved performance.

Bad news: All the shop product listings and blog posts from 2016 are gone. Just completely, totally and bafflingly gone. I’ll do what I can to quickly recreate some of that content but it won’t be 100% identical, so just be aware of that. This is incredibly frustrating but I’m not sure what I can really do to fix it at this point.

The shop and everything else here should be rebuilt in some form over the course of the next week.

[EDIT – SILVER LINING]

On January 30th, 2017, I reverted the domain to its old format for about four hours, just long enough to recover and screen capture all the old blog post content and shop data. I will now recreate all of that content, for the most part, tonight. It won’t all be 100% identical in format – certain details are unavoidably changing like the coded date of the post – but pretty much the same in most respects.